The Cadman Affair: The RCMP Has Done Their Part, Now Is Time For the Ethics Committee

Over the past few months, Ottawa has been inundated with Conservative scandals and unethical behaviour. On some days, it's almost seemed like the Conservatives have been trying to do in two years what the Liberals did in thirteen. One of those scandals was the Cadman Affair, in which the Conservatives allegedly tried to bribe Independent MP Chuck Cadman back in May of 2005 with a life insurance policy, to try to bring down the then Liberal Government. The details of any meetings have been sketchy at best, but an author who has written a book on the matter has now Prime Minister Stephen Harper on tape stating that there were meetings and some kinds of offers made. The Cons have been saying that they offered to bring Mr. Cadman back into the Conservative party, but Cadman's Widow and family have alleged that the Conservatives offered the aforementioned insurance policy. The insurance policy becomes all the more important when you consider the fact that Mr. Cadman was dying of terminal cancer at the time, and actually passed away a couple months after the vote.

Back in March, the Liberals were trying to bring this matter before the House Ethics Committee to be investigated in what seemed to be a rushed matter. At that time, the NDP opposed that, calling on the RCMP to investigate the affair before the House Committee did it's thing. That was something that I also called for at the time . At that time, it wasn't clear if the ethics committees investigation would damage a possible criminal one, so the NDP pushed to wait until the RCMP was done.

Well, today the RCMP announced that they have finished their investigation of the Cadman Affair, announcing that they will not be pressing any criminal charges. Their investigation found that there wasn't enough evidence to file charges against anyone in this instance. Okay, fair enough, but what now? Liberal MP Dominic Leblanc is still calling on Stephen Harper to explain the tape of his statements, which is a fair question to ask. But something tells me that will go no where fast. So what of that Ethics Committee investigation??? I guess we'll find out in a week or so, as the House of Commons is getting their week long Victoria Day long weekend.

Already some Liberals are calling for this investigation, and I have no reason to believe that the NDP won't join the Liberals and the Bloc in this investigation now that the RCMP has done it's part. Now that the criminality of this has been taken care of, now lets take care of the ethical part of this affair. Just because a crime wasn't committed doesn't mean that there weren't ethical breaches and ethics are the purview of the Ethics Committee. Now the Conservatives will be sure to claim that the RCMP found nothing, therefore there is no reason to proceed. I don't buy that for a second. Once again, just because a crime wasn't committed doesn't mean that there wasn't an ethical breach, and that's something that the Conservatives are hoping that Canadians will not be able to understand. So hopefully soon we will find out what the next steps in the whole Cadman Affair will be, but I would be surprised if the next step didn't involve an investigation by the House of Commons Ethics Committee.

Recommend this Post